What is the emblem?

The graphic at the top of the page is called a glider.
It's a pattern from a mathematical simulation called the Game
of Life. In this simulation, very simple rules about the behavior
of dots on a grid give rise to wonderfully complex emergent phenomena.
The glider is the simplest Life pattern that moves, and the most
instantly recognizable of all Life patterns.

Why have an emblem at all?

To some hackers, having an emblem might smack too much of
groupthink. But the hacker community is, in fact, a community, knit
together by trust bonds over the Internet. One thing we've learned
since 1991 is that visible emblems of community are just as valuable
to hackers as they are to other kind of human beings. They help us
recognize each other, help us affirm common values and cooperate more
closely. They're useful social engineering.

Using this emblem means something a little different from just
presenting yourself as a Linux fan, or a Perl-monger, or a member of
any of the hacker subtribes that have become so successful since the
mid-1990s. These are relatively recent developments in a tradition
that goes back decades. Back to the homewbrew microcomputer
experimenters of the early 1970s; the earliest Unix developers and
ARPANET engineers in 1969; and to the SPACEWAR hackers at MIT
in 1961.

The hackers, in the broadest sense, are the people who built the
Internet, and Unix, and the World Wide Web; our dreams of freedom have
changed the world everybody lives in. See How To Become A Hacker for an
in-depth look at what that means. If you find yourself nodding in
agreement as you read that document, you are one of the people who
should be using this emblem.

Why this emblem?

The glider is an appropriate emblem on many levels. Start with
history: the Game of Life was first publicly described in
Scientific American in 1970. It was born at almost the
same time as the Internet and Unix. It has fascinated hackers ever
since.

In the Game of Life, simple rules of cooperation with what's nearby
lead to unexpected, even startling complexities that you could not
have predicted from the rules (emergent phenomena). This is a neat
parallel to the way that startling and unexpected phenomena like
open-source development emerge in the hacker community.

The glider fulfils the criteria for a good logo. It's simple,
bold, hard to mistake for anything else, and easy to print on a mug
or T-shirt. It could be varied, combined with other emblems, or
modified and infinitely repeated for use as a background.

But what if the wrong people start using it?

A lot of people think this emblem will become worse than useless
because script kiddies, crackers and wannabes will be the predominant
ones to use it. Yes, that is a risk — but other emblems, like
the peace sign or the A-for-anarchy, that have similar risks have
retained a lot of utility. If it helps, I've gotten a lot of email
from people picking up on it that I know to be hard-core hackers, and
I've seen almost no abuse of it.

Will you carry my slightly different idea for an emblem?

Probably not. Part of the point of an emblem like this is instant
recognizability. That goal is compromised if there is a lot of
variation among the instances. The two most common suggestions are to
remove the grid or change the orientation of the glider. Perhaps
these variants might have been better, or there is some other idea
that would have been superior, but the benefit of having one
emblem means it would be a bad idea to switch now that this one has
a following. I will carry only images in which the plain-vanilla
graphic at the top of this page is clearly recognizable.